While watching a documentary on the evolution of video games I heard the coolest company mantra ever.

It was from EA sports, the gaming company which focused on creating games which closely represented the real thing. More important for startups was how they got there. One of the key developers came up with the internal motto “if it’s in the game, it’s in the game”. This later evolved to be the brand tagline “It’s in the game!”

EA went the extremes to put everything ‘in the game’. Some of these extremes include:

Getting the actual TV commentators to do voice overs on the games

Licensing teams, sporting organizations brands & players

Getting the actual athletes in the studio to get each players exact movements

The result being amazingly realistic games. Amazing games which wouldn’t have been possible without the mantra – a mantra which simply did not accept compromise.

Mantra is only powerful if we embrace it in every thing we do. EA sports did and went on to be a $4 billion US company with large profit margins.